The present invention relates to an industrial furnace, and more particularly to a heating and/or reducing furnace for treating materials in powder form and/or in small pieces.
The furnaces intended for such operations have a small thermal efficiency as the material becomes strongly heated at the surface exposed to the heat source but badly transmits the heat to the interior of the bulk. Moreover these furnaces are complex and therefore expensive; in particular they use complex means to move the material from the charge to the discharge orifices and often the reducing furnaces cannot use the combustible gases, in particular the carbon monoxide, developing during the reduction process.